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Why Build diversity feels so bad


Kuma.1503

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With every outlier we nerd, it's inevitable that weapon skills and traits will also recieve shaves. Shave away to much and those weapons and traits will become unviable. We've been seeing a lot of that lately with nearly every class. For the purposes of this post, I will mostly focus on the weapons that have been neutered the most over time.

Mesmer

Staff - This weapon has nerfed several times, and it looks like Anet finally succeeded in killing it. Anet nerfed Chaos storm, they nerfed the ambush, they nerfed the phantasm, they nerfed the clone gen, they nerfed the cooldowns, and they nerfed the chaos traitline which had heavy synergy with the weapon. You rarely see staff see play anymore, even on builds which should like it. Condi mirage players have opted to run sword instead because it offers more utility despite being a power based weapon.

Imagine that. Sword offers more utility to a condi build than a Condi/Utility weapon.

Revenant

Hammer- I don't think even Anet knows what they want to do with this weapon. It's been nerfed, reworked, and nerfed again. If they could manage to do something productive with this weapon, maybe we could see power herald see a resurgence in PvE. If they had another viable power weapon to swap to, perhaps they could dish out respectable dps.

Elementalist

Staff - Undo the lava font nerf. This weapon feels like it's lagging a decade in the past. The cast times are slow, the damage is too backloaded for how tiny the AoEs are. Meteor Shower isn't the hard hitter it used to be. Staff weaver has mostly died off outside of some fringe uses in WvW.

Sword- Recieved a lot of nerfs in the feb patch. It's got less evades, less sustain, the burning is so short it practically cleanses itself... It's not entirely dead, but you'd be better off running dagger in the mainhand.

Focus - Still a good weapon tbh, but what happened to obsidian flesh was an atrocity. It shouldn't have been brutalized just to tone down support tempest.

Scepter- It's a weapon seen on glass canon builds, but with the damage nerfs, builds utilizing it are still plenty glass, but there's no canon. The days of Fresh Air scepter weaver are long gone.

Thief

Staff - Neutered by initiative increases. Vault is too expensive, you can no longer cancel staff 3 with jump. It's not worth using in serious matches. It had great synergy with Acro, but the Acro line is in poor shape right now thanks to the 300 CD change.

Rifle - Three round burst, which should be your main damage skill, is not worth using when factoring in the hefty initiative cost. Kneeling is also not worth it anymore save for very niche scenarios. DJ is no longer unblockable, which could be argued, is a good thing, but it leaves DE hard countered by projectile hate. It's not a dead weapon, but it needs work.

Engineer

Pistol (Main and Off hand) - It was already hot garbage pre Feb Patch. Why did Anet feel the need to nerf it? They could have left it alone and it still would've been bad.

Rifle - Overcharged shot has too many trade-offs now. They gave it a windup, that's good. You can react to it now. It doesn't need to also knock back the engi. This especially hurts with the removal of stab on Corona burst, and the nerf to Elixir U.

Ranger

Staff - For a start, we could give them back the evade on ancestral grace. Druid has been underperforming for a while. Especially support druid. This would be a good start.

Necro

... All of necro weapons are good. This is, perhaps, the one class with the most build diversity. You can practically randomize your build and still perform to some degree. More classes should be like this.

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you can pretty much say all weapons that don't have any or not enough utility are unplayable garbage. others simply don't have enough damage.

to name a few:

warrior: offhand axe, offhand mace, offhand sword, longbow, offhand dagger, rifle, hammerele: scepter, staff, offhand dagger, offhand warhornmesmer: focus, offhand swordnecro: mainhand dagger (auto attack hits like a noodle)ranger: mainhand dagger, shortbow (low damage), sword (low damage), torchengi: pistolguardian: longbowthief: staff, riflerev: hammer

try playing some of these, you will either lack damage or feel "naked" because they don't offer survivability. especially on ele. this happens when sustain damage is too high and burst too low. you need a weapon to mitigate sustain damage to stay alive.. or a ton of self sustain. it used to be different.

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@"Jekkt.6045" said:you can pretty much say all weapons that don't have any or not enough utility are unplayable garbage.

The thing to understand about diversity and how to get over this discrepancy, is introducing a subject about calculating optimal time in complex computation.

This is a thing you can look up, and i provide a link here, but the way it goes in computer science and physics, is that if one were to imagine a super computer being given the state of a system, you see how many computations it needs to perform in order to get the most maximally complex state, at which point, a most optimal path from the initial state the end maximal state can be performed.

In other words, if you lined up every single one of these skills and were a super computer that could calculate the most optimal configuration of skills available, the computer can decide the optimal path in some amount of time. The shorter the time frame, the less complex the system is, the longer the time, the more complex.

Now its impossible for the computer to never figure out the most optimal path in a heterogeneous system like gw2... so we can never devise a system in which there isn't an optimal path, but you can make the system more complex so that it would take the computer a longer time to try to search for this path.

This leads us to how games are structured in order for us to think about which decisions are better decisions or worse decisions when we analyze choices. The more obvious the optimality, the faster we move to the maximally complex state of the game which is basically = stale meta dead game.

So if you continue following this logic, the way to create more diversity is to make the game more complex, and to have choices where finding the optimal choice is harder to do. To make a game more complex doesn't mean adding more choices...this is where understanding how complexity systems theory works is key to knowing how to approach such a problem. More complexity arises from things, interacting with more things, in more ways...This means any sort of mechanics that limit what things can interact with other things leads to less complexity, which in turn leads to less diversity. Such mechanics include1) Target Caps2) Static/Sequential trait Selection (Where you can only choose a minor, major and grandmaster in that order, rather than having to choose just 3 of any of them)3) Utility limits (Where it should be possible to use 5 utilities rather than 3 utilities, one heal and one elite)4) Redundant choices (This one is obvious but traits or runes or whatever thing that already exists is redundant, and a more optimal calculation is easier to produce.)

In addition, the above also means that adding more meaningful interactions to choices would also increase complexity...which means introducing synergistics. The more synergies that exist, the more meaningful interactions are, the more complex the system becomes.

Meaningful decisions (Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_balance)

! Meaningful decisions are decisions whose alternatives are neither without any effect nor is one alternative clearly the best. This would make, for example, choosing between the numbers of a dice meaningless if 6 always gives the greatest benefit. This example is a dominant strategy, the most damaging type of meaningless decision, since it does leave a reason to choose any alternative. Meaningful decisions consequently are a central part of the interactive medium games.[7][9] Meaningless decisions, also called trivial decisions, do not add anything desirable to a game.[3][5] They might actually harm the game by unnecessarily making it more complex.[10] Additionally, a higher number of meaningful decisions can also make a game just more complex. Offered decisions should always be meaningful though. However, for the balancing irrelevant decisions might still influence the players experience, e.g. a decision between cosmetic alternatives like skins.!At a certain point, if every skill is useful and has a vast number of possible synergies and less limitations, it becomes more difficult to find optimal builds strategy, and you get more diversity. That is how this is done.

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You guys have a really bad memory if you think build diversity is bad. You can play almost everything and perform so much better than pre feb patch. Scourge and Firebrand dominated the meta of ranked and ats for what felt like an eternity and we all had to adjust to these two classes. All the teams could do was stacking Power Herald or Holos plus what was the most broken side noder. 95 % of games and teams were identitical class and build wise. Ofc some weapons, specs or utilities need adjustments rn but that's the most diverse period of pvp since a very long time.

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Your thief section is way off my friend. A short analysis of what they’ve done to thief weapons recently is summarized as neutering front loaded damage but keeping good back loaded damage on everything but stealth attack skills. This is maybe the number one reason why dp sees play because all it needs for front loaded damage is the stealth attack meanwhile s/d needs auto damage and larcenous etc to be good but only larcenous is decent and even then it’s only decent while autos are piss poor.

Looking at your post you described staff as bad, but what if I told you staff is one of the least nerfed? Would you be shocked, or would u realize it’s just not seem becuz they put a bad taste on it- basically the stealth attack is useless and the staff2 combo is fairly weak as well as mug, so the deadly arts staff suffers, but vault is insanely good rn. Basically acro was neutered so vault spam is out the door and that’s the only reason staff is bad.

Looking at the main purpose of your post though- initiative changes are what’s killing the weapon sets themselves- the main victims are actually S/p with it’s huge initiative cost for the only actually useful thing in the kit. Most would say this isn’t viable, but are only partially correct becuz s/p damage and stun are 1 thing that can unstale this boring meta- so it’s actually really good just unstable becuz of cost, but reduce it back to normal and it’ll be a meta contender for sure. Rifle has been completely neutered as well but this was an over time change literally meant to neuter it- which I hate, it is only still viable in the hands of a good deadeye who spams rifle 2, which sucks but can unstale the meta at least in ranked

There’s my full thief weapon analysis- hope it helps

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Since the OP left out necromancer weapons - probably from a lack of understanding - they are also in dire need of an update:

1). Staff - This is not a normal weapon. Long considered "utility" or not main'able, this weapon as designed is something used to switch to, spam and move off. The power coeff on all attacks is terrible, the conditions per ability is nearly useless, but it does have a field and finisher (unusual for necro). The fear is the only useful part of the weapon. The autoattack is completely useless and evaded easily.

2). Dagger. Another terrible necro weapon. The auto attack is extremely close range and the weapon has no gap closer but an immobilize on skill 3. The channel skill 2 is not that helpful. The dagger is another weapon without a unified theme.

3). Offhand Horn. What happened? This weapon used to be useful, but with the recent change to skill 4 it just became a slow cast limited range cone stun that is inferior to both offhand dagger and focus. It desperately needs a rework.

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@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

At a certain point, if every skill is useful and has a vast number of possible synergies and less limitations, it becomes more difficult to find optimal builds strategy, and you get more diversity. That is how this is done.

It's often times not even that skills are useless but rather you can't take them because you need X skill/weapon just so you can stay alive. Weapons that used to be good are now essentially useless because they don't deliver the required numbers. For example, utility wise dagger offhand on ele is a great weapon. it has cc, mobility, healing, name it and you have it. but you can't take it because sustain damage is so ridiculously high you need an invul so you can have "room to breathe". Look at tempest right now, focus offhand, mist form and lightning flash are pretty much required just so you can stay alive.

How can you fix that? Not in a way that is feasible for arenanet.

You either need to boost ele's core defense so you can take different utility skills, or buff all other weapons/skills to the same level. It's basically a horrible idea.

Nowadays too many skills are too bloated in what they do. Often times skills are just straight up utility+damage+healing which is horrible design. In that regard, removing damage from cc skills was kind of a good decision, just that no damage at all was a bit too much.

Back in vanilla you had skills that you absolutely had to dodge or you would be dead (example: war hammer 5, f1), either completely dead or so low that it didn't matter anyway. Other skills that you could dodge because they provided good utility (war longbow 5). All other skills were pretty much just defensive skills or skills that forced you to use your own defensive and healing skills, basically sustain damage (warrior longbow 2, f1, hammer 3, 2, auto attacks).

This lead to fights that were fun. You had to know what skills to use against enemy skills, plan and manage your cooldowns. You kept certain skills on cooldown on purpose just so you had them when you needed them. I sometimes delayed my rotation on earth just so i could catch the longbow burst skill with my earth 2 projectile block because it was actually worth more than just yolo damage.

While we still do have those interactions somewhat nowadays, they're most of the time just less important than yolo damage...

Every skill deals " a lot" of damage now. some more and some a bit less. It's too easy to deal damage. It's not burst damage that kills you now, it's sustain damage. If you happen to eat a burst you just die faster. Back when this game still took skill to play you actually had to set up your burst, count dodges, stow weapon to bait dodges and all that stuff that was fun and felt rewarding.

So how can anet actually fix this without having to buff or rework most of the weapons?

Lower sustain damage. Not lower damage in general. Skills that have utility need to have less damage. "Filler" skills need to have less damage. CC skills need some damage back, but they should not hit more than 1-2k. Buff burst damage so landing your important skills matters more than it does now. Burst damage has to be fair though, otherwise you get random dumb stuff like stealth oneshots which are not healthy for the game.

And while we're at it, we need more skills that have a conditional effect. Skills that have a base effect and an upgraded or different effect under certain circumstances. That way you actually have to make a decision if you want to use a skill right now or hold it until those conditions are fulfilled. Skills that are currently too bloated could be reworked in such a way.

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@"Apokriphos.7042" said:Since the OP left out necromancer weapons - probably from a lack of understanding - they are also in dire need of an update:

1). Staff - This is not a normal weapon. Long considered "utility" or not main'able, this weapon as designed is something used to switch to, spam and move off. The power coeff on all attacks is terrible, the conditions per ability is nearly useless, but it does have a field and finisher (unusual for necro). The fear is the only useful part of the weapon. The autoattack is completely useless and evaded easily.

2). Dagger. Another terrible necro weapon. The auto attack is extremely close range and the weapon has no gap closer but an immobilize on skill 3. The channel skill 2 is not that helpful. The dagger is another weapon without a unified theme.

3). Offhand Horn. What happened? This weapon used to be useful, but with the recent change to skill 4 it just became a slow cast limited range cone stun that is inferior to both offhand dagger and focus. It desperately needs a rework.

I left out necro weapons because they more of less do what you need them to do.

1.)Staff is pure utility. You could easily make the case that it needs a rework, but it at least fills the role of "utility weapon" nicely. It helps you generate life force with soul marks, it has a reliable AoE CC to help you set up kills, easy access Chill + poison which helps you shut down eles. Condi transfer, which is highly valued on some necro builds, and a small amount of damage and healing. On top of all that, all marks are unblockable if running soul marks. See a ranger running away with GS block? Drop a fear mark under him. Healbreaker full counter? Interrupted. Condi rev thinks he's safe during Crystal hybernation? Interrupted. It's a well rounded weapon with it's own set of pros and cons.

2.)MH dagger is my go to weapon when I need to add a bit more sustain to my build. For context, my 2nd most frequently played build in PvP as of this moment is Mender Heal Scourge, and dagger carries the re-sustain of the build. When enemies go down, I can cleave them with the auto to top up on life force.

It also has nice synergy with their fear shade. You can utilize the fear to set up a CC chain with Dark Pact, or guarantee that life siphon hits.

It's also the weapon of choice for heal scourge in PvE for what that's worth.

It's fairly underwhelming on Reaper though, and core condi would rather run staff | scepter/X. Bunker core, however, can make good use out of it.

If I were to offer any criticism towards mainhand dagger, it would be that the auto should have been ranged. Every other skill on the weapon is ranged, and you would think that a skill like dark pact is meant to facilitate ranged gameplay. A melee auto feels out of place on the weapon.

Overall, good weapon on Support scourge and bunker builds. Outclassed by other weapons on DPS builds. It has its niche.

3.) Warhorn is a good choice on bunker core necro builds. It's got unblockable CC, which is invaluable in certain matchups (Spellbreaker), and it's one of the only sources of swiftness you have outside of Speed of Shadows.

I've also found it useful on Heal Scourge for training down targets with my team. A well timed daze into the enemy healbreaker's full counter can come in clutch when trying to secure a kill. Swiftness helps when I need to kite (which is often since you will be the focus target). Especially useful when trying to do jumping puzzles. Having it means I don't have to dodge jump to make a difficult leap.

If I were to argue that any necro weapon needs work it's offhand dagger, it's 5 skill is pretty underwhelming, but the condi transfer is useful

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@"Jekkt.6045" said:It's often times not even that skills are useless but rather you can't take them because you need X skill/weapon just so you can stay alive. Weapons that used to be good are now essentially useless because they don't deliver the required numbers. For example, utility wise dagger offhand on ele is a great weapon. it has cc, mobility, healing, name it and you have it. but you can't take it because sustain damage is so ridiculously high you need an invul so you can have "room to breathe". Look at tempest right now, focus offhand, mist form and lightning flash are pretty much required just so you can stay alive.

Here's the thing about this and i want you to follow the logic here so you can draw a different conclusion. I understand that the above is a valid observation, but in order to understand why the above observation happens, you have to be asking the right questions.

The way you have to look at the game as a whole is as if it were a complex system...in which some parts have some interaction with other parts...like looking at a spider web. One thread in this spider web is a build that can be made that matches what you said in this quote. In this web there are other builds that will seek to either cooperate or compete with this build, and this is where player choice is introduced.

If you were a super computer to determine which thread in this web is the most optimal decision, it would take you some period of time to figure that out. If you can calculate that the thread you have is not optimal, you will not use the build, or find some other configuration that is more optimal. These paths for finding optimality is what reduces the number of meaningful choices you have available to you.

So the question here shouldn't be about what makes something good or bad to use...the question is about how to make this web more complex, so that finding out whether the build you are using has optimal choices becomes irrelevant rather than relevant.

How can you fix that? Not in a way that is feasible for arenanet.You either need to boost ele's core defense so you can take different utility skills, or buff all other weapons/skills to the same level. It's basically a horrible idea......So how can anet actually fix this without having to buff or rework most of the weapons?

Now here's the other thing. This goes deeper into how understanding complexity theory can tell us how to approach these kinds of problems. I've discussed this in detail before, but essentially Buffs and nerfs do not work because in it's fundamentality it's a flawed procedure that doesn't make any real differences. I've explain why in this comment here https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/comment/1344346#Comment_1344346 .

Once we understand that numerical balance changes are meaningless when considering the entirety of this "web" of balance, we can then move on to understanding that the only way to address these problems of diversity, and in turn it's balance (because turns out they are both basically the same thing) is by looking at mechanics and whether these mechanics create complexity. Alone Lava Font is a skill that features almost no complexity because it has very little interaction with any other skill or traits in the game...and the reason is not because of it's damage, or it's range, or it's speed... It's because of it's actual functions, and the function lacks synergy.

So again this leads back to whether people are asking the right questions. By looking at the problem as "need to boost ele's core defense so you can take different utility skills" This will lead to other areas of the web, and just changing the optimal path from one path to another...and this doesn't solve the problem of diversity or balance, it just moves it around, which amounts to having no meaning based on what i linked above.

Nowadays too many skills are too bloated in what they do. Often times skills are just straight up utility+damage+healing which is horrible design. In that regard, removing damage from cc skills was kind of a good decision, just that no damage at all was a bit too much.

Now yes over bloating is a bad design...this can also be explained, but I'm gonna try to keep it short and sweet. Essentially what the game lacks is actual tradeoffs. Now i want to explain that trade offs have a scientifically applicable definition, and that what Anet has implemented as "tradeoffs" are not real tradeoffs.

In my previous comment i mentioned that Target Caps are part of the problem, that reduces the complexity of interactions in the game. This should have got you thinking a bit because it seems counter intuitive at first...how can it be possible that removing target caps give us more diversity and better balance? What happens if we had skills like "Backstab" that could hit 100 enemies...wouldn't that be overpowered?

The answer lye in what's called "Equilibrium mechanics" aka real tradeoffs. We see these tradeoffs in science all the time, and it's essentially just functions that stop divergent behavior from becoming more divergent. The Stock Market is a perfect example of a system that functions off of unbounded mechanics (where stock price could potentially diverge in either direction infinitely...without bound), that on their own create equilibriums when the behavior of the system becomes more divergent (Supply and Demand...Overbought and Oversold triggering reversals in stock prices). These equilibrium mechanics also existed in some ways in guild wars 1, and were abandoned in before launch of guild wars 2... Where skills and abilities that do something should come with a cost, and this cost isn't a linear "tradeoff" like -300 vitality...These costs should be functions that stop divergent behavior.

So we could look at the example of Backstab without a target cap... This skill in it's current form only works in 1v1 fights, as the target cap is a maximum of 1. Increase the target cap to 5, and it now becomes useful in teamfights (5v5 bracket) and in all brackets below that...from 2v2,3v3,4v4 etc...So now imagine this ability without a target cap against 100 people. Landing a Backstab becomes VERY valuable if it were to hit 100 people. So this behavior is called divergent behavior, where in this case, something becomes exponentially more useful the higher number of people you are fighting against. An equilibrium mechanic...or a true tradeoff, would be a mechanic that presents a cost, such that the higher number of targets there are when using this ability, the more of the cost you will incur. My favorite example to use is that, every time you land a backstab on a player, you apply 1 poison to yourself. In a 1v1 situation, applying 1 poison is low impact, and interesting tradeoff...but now if that backstab was used against an 80man zerg, well now, you have to face the consequence that if you used a backstab, you could get 80 stacks of poison with a single use. This is a REAL tradeoff that prevents divergent mechanics from taking off...which to your point, is how one should approach balancing of bloated skills.

There's a lot more to point out in this subject area, but that's just one aspect about the quote I'm responding to in your post.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Jekkt.6045" said:It's often times not even that skills are useless but rather you can't take them because you need X skill/weapon just so you can stay alive. Weapons that used to be good are now essentially useless because they don't deliver the required numbers. For example, utility wise dagger offhand on ele is a great weapon. it has cc, mobility, healing, name it and you have it. but you can't take it because sustain damage is so ridiculously high you need an invul so you can have "room to breathe". Look at tempest right now, focus offhand, mist form and lightning flash are pretty much required just so you can stay alive.

Here's the thing about this and i want you to follow the logic here so you can draw a different conclusion. I understand that the above is a valid observation, but in order to understand why the above observation happens, you have to be asking the right questions.

The way you have to look at the game as a whole is as if it were a complex system...in which some parts have some interaction with other parts...like looking at a spider web. One thread in this spider web is a build that can be made that matches what you said in this quote. In this web there are other builds that will seek to either cooperate or compete with this build, and this is where player choice is introduced.

If you were a super computer to determine which thread in this web is the most optimal decision, it would take you some period of time to figure that out. If you can calculate that the thread you have is not optimal, you will not use the build, or find some other configuration that is more optimal. These paths for finding optimality is what reduces the number of meaningful choices you have available to you.

So the question here shouldn't be about what makes something good or bad to use...the question is about how to make this web more complex, so that finding out whether the build you are using has optimal choices becomes irrelevant rather than relevant.

How can you fix that? Not in a way that is feasible for arenanet.You either need to boost ele's core defense so you can take different utility skills, or buff all other weapons/skills to the same level. It's basically a horrible idea......So how can anet actually fix this without having to buff or rework most of the weapons?

Now here's the other thing. This goes deeper into how understanding complexity theory can tell us how to approach these kinds of problems. I've discussed this in detail before, but essentially Buffs and nerfs do not work because in it's fundamentality it's a flawed procedure that doesn't make any real differences. I've explain why in this comment here
.

Once we understand that numerical balance changes are meaningless when considering the entirety of this "web" of balance, we can then move on to understanding that the only way to address these problems of diversity, and in turn it's balance (because turns out they are both basically the same thing) is by looking at mechanics and whether these mechanics create complexity. Alone Lava Font is a skill that features almost no complexity because it has very little interaction with any other skill or traits in the game...and the reason is not because of it's damage, or it's range, or it's speed... It's because of it's actual functions, and the function lacks synergy.

So again this leads back to whether people are asking the right questions. By looking at the problem as "need to boost ele's core defense so you can take different utility skills" This will lead to other areas of the web, and just changing the optimal path from one path to another...and this doesn't solve the problem of diversity or balance, it just moves it around, which amounts to having no meaning based on what i linked above.

Nowadays too many skills are too bloated in what they do. Often times skills are just straight up utility+damage+healing which is horrible design. In that regard, removing damage from cc skills was kind of a good decision, just that no damage at all was a bit too much.

Now yes over bloating is a bad design...this can also be explained, but I'm gonna try to keep it short and sweet. Essentially what the game lacks is actual tradeoffs. Now i want to explain that trade offs have a scientifically applicable definition, and that what Anet has implemented as "tradeoffs" are not real tradeoffs.

In my previous comment i mentioned that Target Caps are part of the problem, that reduces the complexity of interactions in the game. This should have got you thinking a bit because it seems counter intuitive at first...how is it that target caps give us more diversity and better balance? What happens if we had skills like "Backstab" that could hit 100 enemies...wouldn't that be overpowered?

The answer lye in what's called "Equilibrium mechanics" aka real tradeoffs. We see these tradeoffs in science all the time, and it's essentially just functions that stop divergent behavior from becoming more divergent. The Stock Market is a perfect example of a system that functions off of unbounded mechanics (where stock price could potentially diverge in either direction infinitely...without bound), that on their own create equilibriums when the behavior of the system becomes more divergent (Supply and Demand...Overbought and Oversold triggering reversals in stock prices). These equilibrium mechanics also existed in some ways in guild wars 1, and were abandoned in before launch of guild wars 2... Where skills and abilities that do something should come with a cost, and this cost isn't a linear "tradeoff" like -300 vitality...These costs should be functions that stop divergent behavior.

So we could look at the example of Backstab without a target cap... This skill in it's current form only works in 1v1 fights, as the target cap is a maximum of 1. Increase the target cap to 5, and it now becomes useful in teamfights (5v5 bracket) and in all brackets below that...from 2v2,3v3,4v4 etc...So now imagine this ability without a target cap against 100 people. Landing a Backstab becomes VERY valuable if it were to hit 100 people. So this behavior is called divergent behavior, where in this case, something becomes exponentially more useful the higher number of people you are fighting against. An equilibrium mechanic...or a true tradeoff, would be a mechanic that presents a cost, such that the higher number of targets there are when using this ability, the more of the cost you will incur. My favorite example to use is that, every time you land a backstab you apply 1 poison to yourself. In a 1v1 situation, applying 1 poison is low impact, and interesting tradeoff...but now if that backstab was used against an 80man zerg, well now, you have to face the consequence that if you used a backstab, you could get 80 stacks of poison with a single use. This is a REAL tradeoff that prevents divergent mechanics from taking off...which to your point, is how one should approach balancing of bloated skills.

There's a lot more to point out in this subject area, but that's just one aspect about the quote I'm responding to in your post.

i agree with your point about the backstab example and we did indeed have real tradeoffs at release of the game. aoes came at the cost of lower overall damage compared to single target. now basically everything is aoe at no cost. remember spirit ranger meta? (not that it was a meta defining build...) spirits back then didn't die all the time to aoe. imagine spirit ranger nowadays (if it was functionally the same build).

i think one of the best examples are healer builds in regards to lazy uninspired design without complexity. you have an aoe heal skill with a target cap of 5? i think in pvp. you usually have a skill that cleanses all/ many conditions and one that does a bit of both. usually the heals are around 2-3k, a bit loeer for the cleansing ones.

now imagine this. a healing skill that heals more the less people are in range. you can either stack people for a small aoe heal or you can actually position yourself in a way so you give one ally a big heal.

or, a heal skill that heals a bit and cleanses conditions. but, if your target has no conditions you heal it for more. that way you can cleanse first with a different skill to get a bigger heal, or live with the smaller heal.

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@"Jekkt.6045" said:It's often times not even that skills are useless but rather you can't take them because you need X skill/weapon just so you can stay alive. Weapons that used to be good are now essentially useless because they don't deliver the required numbers. For example, utility wise dagger offhand on ele is a great weapon. it has cc, mobility, healing, name it and you have it. but you can't take it because sustain damage is so ridiculously high you need an invul so you can have "room to breathe". Look at tempest right now, focus offhand, mist form and lightning flash are pretty much required just so you can stay alive.

Here's the thing about this and i want you to follow the logic here so you can draw a different conclusion. I understand that the above is a valid observation, but in order to understand why the above observation happens, you have to be asking the right questions.

The way you have to look at the game as a whole is as if it were a complex system...in which some parts have some interaction with other parts...like looking at a spider web. One thread in this spider web is a build that can be made that matches what you said in this quote. In this web there are other builds that will seek to either cooperate or compete with this build, and this is where player choice is introduced.

If you were a super computer to determine which thread in this web is the most optimal decision, it would take you some period of time to figure that out. If you can calculate that the thread you have is not optimal, you will not use the build, or find some other configuration that is more optimal. These paths for finding optimality is what reduces the number of meaningful choices you have available to you.

So the question here shouldn't be about what makes something good or bad to use...the question is about how to make this web more complex, so that finding out whether the build you are using has optimal choices becomes irrelevant rather than relevant.

How can you fix that? Not in a way that is feasible for arenanet.You either need to boost ele's core defense so you can take different utility skills, or buff all other weapons/skills to the same level. It's basically a horrible idea......So how can anet actually fix this without having to buff or rework most of the weapons?

Now here's the other thing. This goes deeper into how understanding complexity theory can tell us how to approach these kinds of problems. I've discussed this in detail before, but essentially Buffs and nerfs do not work because in it's fundamentality it's a flawed procedure that doesn't make any real differences. I've explain why in this comment here
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Once we understand that numerical balance changes are meaningless when considering the entirety of this "web" of balance, we can then move on to understanding that the only way to address these problems of diversity, and in turn it's balance (because turns out they are both basically the same thing) is by looking at mechanics and whether these mechanics create complexity. Alone Lava Font is a skill that features almost no complexity because it has very little interaction with any other skill or traits in the game...and the reason is not because of it's damage, or it's range, or it's speed... It's because of it's actual functions, and the function lacks synergy.

So again this leads back to whether people are asking the right questions. By looking at the problem as "need to boost ele's core defense so you can take different utility skills" This will lead to other areas of the web, and just changing the optimal path from one path to another...and this doesn't solve the problem of diversity or balance, it just moves it around, which amounts to having no meaning based on what i linked above.

Nowadays too many skills are too bloated in what they do. Often times skills are just straight up utility+damage+healing which is horrible design. In that regard, removing damage from cc skills was kind of a good decision, just that no damage at all was a bit too much.

Now yes over bloating is a bad design...this can also be explained, but I'm gonna try to keep it short and sweet. Essentially what the game lacks is actual tradeoffs. Now i want to explain that trade offs have a scientifically applicable definition, and that what Anet has implemented as "tradeoffs" are not real tradeoffs.

In my previous comment i mentioned that Target Caps are part of the problem, that reduces the complexity of interactions in the game. This should have got you thinking a bit because it seems counter intuitive at first...how can it be possible that removing target caps give us more diversity and better balance? What happens if we had skills like "Backstab" that could hit 100 enemies...wouldn't that be overpowered?

The answer lye in what's called "Equilibrium mechanics" aka real tradeoffs. We see these tradeoffs in science all the time, and it's essentially just functions that stop divergent behavior from becoming more divergent. The Stock Market is a perfect example of a system that functions off of unbounded mechanics (where stock price could potentially diverge in either direction infinitely...without bound), that on their own create equilibriums when the behavior of the system becomes more divergent (Supply and Demand...Overbought and Oversold triggering reversals in stock prices). These equilibrium mechanics also existed in some ways in guild wars 1, and were abandoned in before launch of guild wars 2... Where skills and abilities that do something should come with a cost, and this cost isn't a linear "tradeoff" like -300 vitality...These costs should be functions that stop divergent behavior.

So we could look at the example of Backstab without a target cap... This skill in it's current form only works in 1v1 fights, as the target cap is a maximum of 1. Increase the target cap to 5, and it now becomes useful in teamfights (5v5 bracket) and in all brackets below that...from 2v2,3v3,4v4 etc...So now imagine this ability without a target cap against 100 people. Landing a Backstab becomes VERY valuable if it were to hit 100 people. So this behavior is called divergent behavior, where in this case, something becomes exponentially more useful the higher number of people you are fighting against. An equilibrium mechanic...or a true tradeoff, would be a mechanic that presents a cost, such that the higher number of targets there are when using this ability, the more of the cost you will incur. My favorite example to use is that, every time you land a backstab you apply 1 poison to yourself. In a 1v1 situation, applying 1 poison is low impact, and interesting tradeoff...but now if that backstab was used against an 80man zerg, well now, you have to face the consequence that if you used a backstab, you could get 80 stacks of poison with a single use. This is a REAL tradeoff that prevents divergent mechanics from taking off...which to your point, is how one should approach balancing of bloated skills.

There's a lot more to point out in this subject area, but that's just one aspect about the quote I'm responding to in your post.

I agree with what you're saying. Removing target cap on abilities like fire bomb or meteor shower for example would make sense. If you and 5 other people stand inside of a flame, it's not magicaly going to stop hitting you because of the 5 other people. You're going to get burned.

I think there should be a distinction between single target and AoE spells though. If nothing else, for rp reasons. It makes no sense for a backstab to hit 100 targets. You're stabbing one person in the back with a dagger. It should be a single target nuke. Difficult to land with high payoff.

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@"Jekkt.6045" said:now imagine this. a healing skill that heals more the less people are in range. you can either stack people for a small aoe heal or you can actually position yourself in a way so you give one ally a big heal.or, a heal skill that heals a bit and cleanses conditions. but, if your target has no conditions you heal it for more. that way you can cleanse first with a different skill to get a bigger heal, or live with the smaller heal.

Now we're thinkin' with portals! These are great examples, and sound like actual and useful skills we could see in the game.

In addition to what was said here already, what ends up happening if changes like these were made, is that these systems will tend to self balance and sometimes cause self equilibrium to occur. For example, a 100 target Meteor Shower, can be counterplayed by 100 target Overload Water...So systems will tend to, whether designed for or not, try to find an equilibrium. So long as the mechanics are designed to stop run away divergent behavior, outliers are quelled by more builds simply existing in what Will Wright would call "The Possibility Space."...

!

this is due to just how statistical behavior muffles outliers via sheer volume...which is basically Anthropic reasoning. Outliers in this case is just another way of describing the paths of "most optimal builds."
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@Kuma.1503 said:

Necro

... All of necro weapons are good. This is, perhaps, the one class with the most build diversity. You can practically randomize your build and still perform to some degree. More classes should be like this.Not at plat. Nowhere near!You have one viable weaponset for condi and one viable weaponset for power.Power is bound to the reaper spec. Condi is bound to the core spec.Soul Reaping is mandatory.

You end up with very few actually viable options (basically 2 builds). The class with the most diversity is and has ever been guardian (you didn't even list it). But only few people are good at it.

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Mesmer Staff and Deadeye Rifle should both remain non-viable, unless given a signficant re-work. They are fundamentally anti-fun to play against. The same goes for any zoo builds which function just by activating all summons then afk-ing on a node.

Read carefully. Not saying they are too strong. Saying they are anti-fun. Playing whack-a-mole against rifle deadeye or chasing a phase-retreating mesmer round and round in circles is tedious in the extreme.

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@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" What does "complexity theory", "computer science", "physics", "super computers", "anthropic reasoning"... have to do with the tons of pve skill designs and pve mechanics being used for pvp modes? Or the glacially slow profession updates and the many years between xpacs? Or the fact that we have been told many times that things are coming, but they do not? Or the fact that the devs will not make certain needed updates because they do not want to "screw over pve balance"? Or that "profession difficulty scaling" was held as a higher design priority over other areas of professions? Or the fact that at any given time there are limited amounts of skills, traits, and gears for professions that are impactful for pvp play?

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There are so much more that needs love.

Warrior Hammer, Guardian Hammer.Warrior Rifle, Engi Rifle. (Engi Rifle is by no means okay.)Engi Pistols.Warrior Longbow, Guardian Longbow (Same case with Engi Rifle, functional, but by no means okay)Necro Daggers, Ranger Daggers, Warrior OH Dagger.

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@Swagger.1459 said:@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" What does "complexity theory", "computer science", "physics", "super computers", "anthropic reasoning"... have to do with the tons of pve skill designs and pve mechanics being used for pvp modes? Or the glacially slow profession updates and the many years between xpacs? Or the fact that we have been told many times that things are coming, but they do not? Or the fact that the devs will not make certain needed updates because they do not want to "screw over pve balance"? Or that "profession difficulty scaling" was held as a higher design priority over other areas of professions? Or the fact that at any given time there are limited amounts of skills, traits, and gears for professions that are impactful for pvp play?

I literately just linked a 2 hour long video of a well known game dev that talks about how complex systems are involved in all aspects of game design.

Even though some (but not all) the questions you've asked are some-what valid questions, this thread is about diversity. You can say that we don't have diversity because "game devs don't care," but that's not very constructive now is it.

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@Ragnar.4257 said:Mesmer Staff and Deadeye Rifle should both remain non-viable, unless given a signficant re-work. They are fundamentally anti-fun to play against. The same goes for any zoo builds which function just by activating all summons then afk-ing on a node.

Read carefully. Not saying they are too strong. Saying they are anti-fun. Playing whack-a-mole against rifle deadeye or chasing a phase-retreating mesmer round and round in circles is tedious in the extreme.

how hard is it to chase a phase retreat on a 12 second cooldown

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@Kuma.1503 said:With every outlier we nerd, it's inevitable that weapon skills and traits will also recieve shaves. Shave away to much and those weapons and traits will become unviable. We've been seeing a lot of that lately with nearly every class. For the purposes of this post, I will mostly focus on the weapons that have been neutered the most over time.

Mesmer

Staff - This weapon has nerfed several times, and it looks like Anet finally succeeded in killing it. Anet nerfed Chaos storm, they nerfed the ambush, they nerfed the phantasm, they nerfed the clone gen, they nerfed the cooldowns, and they nerfed the chaos traitline which had heavy synergy with the weapon. You rarely see staff see play anymore, even on builds which should like it. Condi mirage players have opted to run sword instead because it offers more utility despite being a power based weapon.

Imagine that. Sword offers more utility to a condi build than a Condi/Utility weapon.

Revenant

Hammer- I don't think even Anet knows what they want to do with this weapon. It's been nerfed, reworked, and nerfed again. If they could manage to do something productive with this weapon, maybe we could see power herald see a resurgence in PvE. If they had another viable power weapon to swap to, perhaps they could dish out respectable dps.

Elementalist

Staff - Undo the lava font nerf. This weapon feels like it's lagging a decade in the past. The cast times are slow, the damage is too backloaded for how tiny the AoEs are. Meteor Shower isn't the hard hitter it used to be. Staff weaver has mostly died off outside of some fringe uses in WvW.

Sword- Recieved a lot of nerfs in the feb patch. It's got less evades, less sustain, the burning is so short it practically cleanses itself... It's not entirely dead, but you'd be better off running dagger in the mainhand.

Focus - Still a good weapon tbh, but what happened to obsidian flesh was an atrocity. It shouldn't have been brutalized just to tone down support tempest.

Scepter- It's a weapon seen on glass canon builds, but with the damage nerfs, builds utilizing it are still plenty glass, but there's no canon. The days of Fresh Air scepter weaver are long gone.

Thief

Staff - Neutered by initiative increases. Vault is too expensive, you can no longer cancel staff 3 with jump. It's not worth using in serious matches. It had great synergy with Acro, but the Acro line is in poor shape right now thanks to the 300 CD change.

Rifle - Three round burst, which should be your main damage skill, is not worth using when factoring in the hefty initiative cost. Kneeling is also not worth it anymore save for very niche scenarios. DJ is no longer unblockable, which could be argued, is a good thing, but it leaves DE hard countered by projectile hate. It's not a dead weapon, but it needs work.

Engineer

Pistol (Main and Off hand) - It was already hot garbage pre Feb Patch. Why did Anet feel the need to nerf it? They could have left it alone and it still would've been bad.

Rifle - Overcharged shot has too many trade-offs now. They gave it a windup, that's good. You can react to it now. It doesn't need to also knock back the engi. This especially hurts with the removal of stab on Corona burst, and the nerf to Elixir U.

Ranger

Staff - For a start, we could give them back the evade on ancestral grace. Druid has been underperforming for a while. Especially support druid. This would be a good start.

Necro

... All of necro weapons are good. This is, perhaps, the one class with the most build diversity. You can practically randomize your build and still perform to some degree. More classes should be like this.

No guard weps? Longbow, sceptor or hammer?

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@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 What does "complexity theory", "computer science", "physics", "super computers", "anthropic reasoning"... have to do with the tons of pve skill designs and pve mechanics being used for pvp modes? Or the glacially slow profession updates and the many years between xpacs? Or the fact that we have been told many times that things are coming, but they do not? Or the fact that the devs will not make certain needed updates because they do not want to "screw over pve balance"? Or that "profession difficulty scaling" was held as a higher design priority over other areas of professions? Or the fact that at any given time there are limited amounts of skills, traits, and gears for professions that are impactful for pvp play?

I literately just linked a 2 hour long video of a well known game dev that talks about how complex systems are involved in all aspects of game design.

Even though some (but not all) the questions you've asked are some-what valid questions, this thread is about diversity. You can say that we don't have diversity because "game devs don't care," but that's not very constructive now is it.

Nobody, including the devs who read the forums, are watching a 2 hour video... and one that isn’t related to GW2. The devs don’t want theory stuff either, they want specific and practical feedback that can possibly be applied to the game. And that’s what you are missing completely.

Nowhere did I state, or imply, the “game devs don’t care”. That’s an assumption on your part.

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@Swagger.1459 said:@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" What does "complexity theory", "computer science", "physics", "super computers", "anthropic reasoning"... have to do with the tons of pve skill designs and pve mechanics being used for pvp modes? Or the glacially slow profession updates and the many years between xpacs? Or the fact that we have been told many times that things are coming, but they do not? Or the fact that the devs will not make certain needed updates because they do not want to "screw over pve balance"? Or that "profession difficulty scaling" was held as a higher design priority over other areas of professions? Or the fact that at any given time there are limited amounts of skills, traits, and gears for professions that are impactful for pvp play?

Because when your IRL friends have told you to stop going on about your Masters project, you need another outlet.

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@Swagger.1459 said:The devs don’t want theory stuff either, they want specific and practical feedback that can possibly be applied to the game. And that’s what you are missing completely.

This is actually common knowledge, widely accepted science to everyone with a bachelors degree. So I'm not missing anything. If you don't want to read or watch the valid sources I provide to illustrate the concept being explained, then that's really your loss not mine. Plus it's a great lecture that would blow your mind in particular, about how intimate computer science (and science in general) is related to games that we play on computers... who would've thought :open_mouth:

Some-what related, do you think great game devs like Hideo Kojima put in scientific references in their games for no reason? You think he didn't go and consult real physicists and other experts to make sure the game he was making would actually work both in story and functionality? and wasn't just a bunch of baloney before expanding on it with artistic license?

lastly, everything you said there is no point in talking about it...and imo isn't the real problem anyway. They give plenty of content, they update quiet often...more than I've seen any other game providing content...

The problem is that every time they do an update to balance it's always very poor updates that don't fix anything...and I'm providing scientifically backed claims of why that is. You can talk all you want about how the studio is a mess... that isn't constructive cause you have NO idea what is going on behind the curtain and it's meaningless to speculate about in that regard.

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